The Science Museum's hidden treasures

Only eight percent of the Science Museum is on show. Ninety two percent resides in six aircraft hangars just south of Swindon.

It is guarded by Gurkhas, peopled by ghosts in flying jackets and filled with vintage planes, strange machines and a teamaker the size of a wardrobe. Lucy Davies visits the greatest museum you'll never see.

'There's a reason for the red tags,' scolds the curator as our photographer circles in for a close-up of an autopsy table. This one, she warns, belonged to Sir William Jenner, physician to Queen Victoria, whose reputation rests on drawing the distinction between typhus and typhoid. 'It's covered in spores and deposits. We don't know how infectious they still are.' (read more)

stray bullets

Planning smart for your food supply Why store? The world we live in today is fast moving, ever changing and full of surprises. On top of this, there has never been a time when the average family has had less food in their homes than now. A hundred years ago, people generally didn’t go to the store very often. As a rule, America was much more agrarian than it is today, with people growing the majority of the plants and animals they ate. Today, many of us would be at our rope’s end after just a couple of days of not being able to go to the grocery store. (via)

Balloons carried gun away in Red Lobster executive's 'CSI'-like suicide "This was apparently an elaborate attempt to make it look like he was murdered..." (via)

Man claims to know source of 'Phoenix Lights' UFO sighting Dr. James R. Bartzen said he has indisputable proof that the so-called "Phoenix Lights" were a product of secret man-made technology being shielded from the public. (via)

Blurred Out: 51 Things You Aren't Allowed to See on Google Maps Most of these are understandable, but William Hurt's home in Paris? What's going on over there? Maybe he complained like the Borings. (via)

also:
Umberto Eco interview (via)
China Miéville interview (via)
Restoring Renaissance Frescoes (via)
Disturbing bound feet photos (via)

factoid: After studying it for 47 days, the New York Museum of Modern Art discovered that the Matisse painting Le Bateau was hanging upside down. (link) (via)

A Trip to Iron Mountain

Interesting profile of Iron Mountain from KOMO.
This is the place you saw at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.



Not quite so Top Secret now then, is it?

Thanks, Dad